Date of Award

1-1-2013

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Educational Policy and Leadership

Content Description

1 online resource (xviii, 231 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Gilbert Valverde

Committee Members

Gilbert Valverde, Kathryn Schiller, Alan Wagner

Keywords

academic achievement, school configurations, school transitions, School management and organization, Academic achievement

Subject Categories

Educational Administration and Supervision | Education Policy

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were essentially two types of organizational structures for primary and secondary education in the United States. There were either one-room K-12 schools or in larger systems K-8 buildings feeding into four-year high schools. Despite numerous experiments since then in reconfiguring schools resulting in a wide variety of grade-grouping combinations, there continues to be no consensus on one preferred organizational model for schools within districts. More importantly, there has been relatively little empirical research done to determine whether the way schools are configured or whether the number of schools a child attends, which can range from one to five or more between kindergarten and high school, has any significant impact on academic performance. The analyses of academic and demographic records of 598 New York State's school districts over four years from the 2007-08 through 2010-11 school years has provided evidence that the number of structured school-to-school transitions that are made through primary and secondary school has a statistically significant influence on academic performance, as measured by the total percentage of students who graduate within a specified period of entering high school.

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